Baroness Louise Casey has accused the government of taking the “lazy option” and failing victims of child grooming who were prosecuted for crimes they were coerced into — including prostitution.
Speaking exclusively to the BBC, the author of the landmark national investigation into grooming gangs said the legislation introduced to pardon “child prostitution” offences does not go far enough. “I feel that they've gone for the easy option and, if I'm being more brutal, [the] lazy option of not setting up a disregard scheme with enough thought, enough care and enough action,” Baroness Casey said. “So far, they have failed.”
“Baroness Casey says government's pardon scheme for groomed children is 'lazy' and fails victims.”
Her call last year to quash all convictions of victims who were criminalised when they should have been protected led to a partial government response. The Home Office now says it will take forward her recommendation to review criminal convictions that may have been shaped by a person’s experience of being sexually abused as a child. A spokesperson added: “We encourage all those affected by these convictions to get in touch with the Criminal Cases Review Commission.”
But for survivors like Joanne — not her real name — that is not enough. She was groomed from the age of 15 and says she was raped and sexually exploited over several years by more than 500 men, all over the country. Joanne was repeatedly arrested as a child and, despite being under 18, she was treated as an offender and brought before the courts. In the early 1990s, aged 17, she received her first conviction in Wolverhampton for loitering and soliciting. “I didn't have the mental or the emotional maturity to understand what that meant,” she told the BBC. Now in her 50s, she recognises she was being raped. “Everybody told me that I was this problem - that I was guilty and I had committed a crime.”
Her criminal record — more than 40 prostitution convictions — has blocked her from jobs, college, travel abroad and even volunteering at her children’s school. She is among thousands of people due to be pardoned for loitering or soliciting under the new legislation, but she says the change does not go far enough. The BBC has spoken to other women who, decades on, say they are still being punished for crimes they were coerced into.
Baroness Casey demanded a comprehensive scheme to look at quashing all wrongful convictions for victims — not just the narrow pardons now on offer. The question that remains is whether the government will listen before more lives are irreparably damaged.